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HELEN HUTCHINGS: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar on Maximising
Your Website Potential. My name is Helen Hutchings from the Phillips Group and I am your host
for this webinar.
In a moment, I will hand you over to today's presenter, Doug Pye, and at the end of the
webinar I will hold a questions and answer section with Doug and we look forward to receiving
your questions.
This webinar is part of a series, being provided by the Department of Tourism, Major Events,
Small Business and the Commonwealth Games. We hope that you find it informative and useful
for your business.
Before I hand over to Doug, I would just like to apologise. Both Doug and I are still suffering
a little bit from the cold that we had last week. So we probably both sound like we were
singing at jazz clubs last night, but I can assure you it's just a little bit of a cold.
Over to you, Doug.
DOUG PYE: Thanks, Helen. And, yeah, apologies to everyone, if I do sound a little bit croaky.
I am just going to take you through today's agenda.
We are going to do a little quick introduction and orientation about the software and also
my background. I will then discuss the key points with you and provide examples about
these points that hopefully will assist you with your business; and as Helen mentioned,
we will do a question and answer session at the end. So please participate throughout
the session and ask your questions. Helen will be collating them and we will be answering
them at the end.
On your screen you should have a panel and there's a question session on the panel. So
feel free to enter a question at any time. As I mentioned, we will get back to them at
the end of the session. But please also note that I am going to ask some polls throughout
the webinar. Unfortunately, people using an iPad will not be supported by the Go To webinar
software, so you won't be able to participate in the polls and we apologise for that. If
you are using Twitter, feel free to interact with us via the #QldBiz. We will be checking
the hashtag throughout this webinar and if you post a question there, we will pick that
one up as well and feed it in at the end.
But just quickly: I am going to be explaining during the webinar an understanding of the
purpose of your website, optimising website design, posting effective content, compatibility,
getting people to your website, and review and improvement.
A little bit about myself: I have been with Phillips Group as the Marketing Director,
working with the company now for coming on six years. I have a number of small to medium
enterprises as well as large clients within the corporate sector, as well as property
and mining resources.
We will just get on with the presentation now. We are going to cover tips and ways to
get the most out of your website. As I found working with businesses over the years, websites
often get set up and forgotten about or are never really tested to see if they are actually
delivering on their purpose.
As you would no doubt agree, your website is a vitally important part of your business.
It's a way to connect with your customers, to let them learn about who you are as a business,
what your expertise is, what differentiates you from your competitors. Your website is
an important part of your overall marketing plan and its design/content and usability
should align with your core business goals.
So because of this, the first step in making sure your website is effective is making sure
that you actually understand its purpose. That is, what are you trying achieve with
it? Ensuring that you understand the core function of your website will assist in evaluating
its effectiveness.
Your website should describe your capabilities and expertise and give your business legitimacy;
establish you as a business that can be trusted; offer a cost effective way of advertising
and marketing your business; give your business a global market, and it is not necessarily
limited to local customers only; develop and strengthen your relationship with both current
and prospective customers by establishing a continual line of communication with them;
inform and engage potential customers through informative and easily navigable content;
and provide a platform, obviously for sales.
Obviously, your website should aim to inform, engage and convert your audience to some type
of action.
I am going to do a quick poll now and I would like to get an understanding from you about
whether you actually have a website already. A fairly simple question, obviously.
I am going to launch that now and give you a few seconds to answer the question.
...
I am going to close the poll now and share the responses.
So, interestingly we have obviously 88 per cent of our attendees today who do have a
website. Interestingly, 12 per cent don't and I really hope that we get something out
of today's session, so it can encourage you to go on and actually develop a website.
I am now going to do another poll. For those who do have a website, are you happy with
how your website currently looks?
I will give you a few seconds to consider your response.
I close the poll now.
...
It's nice to know that almost half our attendees today are quite happy with how their website
looks. And with the 28 per cent and 13 per cent who are undecided, and who are not happy
with how their website looks, again, I really hope you get something out of today's session
and just get that little bit of encouragement needed to investigate ways about how we can
actually improve that.
Getting the most out of your agency. Before we get too far in, it's worth considering
how you are actually going to build your website. If you don't already have a website, you can
either build your own website if you have the capability, or use a web developer or
agency to do it for you. While building your own website is possible, a professional can
be build your site quickly and provide you with guidance on proven successful web design.
A professional will sit down with you and go through the design, your target audiences,
the business goals and objectives, as well as maintenance and future development.
What we plan to do today with the workbook that has been provided is give you some background
knowledge of these elements that will help you to work with your developer to get the
most out of their time and your online presence. Basically, as we know, time is money. If you
can go into a meeting with a developer with ideas on what you are after, it will hopefully
save you and the developer time in the long run.
So before you provide a brief to your agency or developer, take some time with a pen and
paper and consider why you want a website. What's the most important thing that you want
your website to do? Who will use your website? What are the marketing tools that have worked
in the past? How can you use the website to streamline current processes? Also, importantly,
how much are you prepared to pay? And how much time can you invest in the process?
It's important to also consider how regularly you are going to update the site and who will
have access to the site for maintenance. Knowing these details will assist the developer in
deciding the best design, platform and content management system for your site.
So static website versus dynamic website. If you are setting your website up for the
first time, or even if you are considering a website refresh, a key consideration is
whether to go with a static or a dynamic site. This is a really important consideration,
as static and dynamic websites will each organise and present the content of your website in
very different ways.
Static websites are often a quick and cheap option to present content consistently each
time the page is loaded. The content is actually hard coded into the site. It doesn't allow
for the updating of content, other than by actually going into each page and editing
the HTML code. Traditionally, a static website has been the most common amongst small businesses,
as they are quicker and cheaper to develop initially and also cheaper to host. The disadvantages
to a static site: the hard coding restricts the ability to freely edit/change content.
Changes will generally require editing of the HTML code each time and this might mean
that you could require a web developer each time you want to make a change to the site.
Dynamic websites allow flexibility and functionality and they are usually controlled by content
management system. What this does is provide everyday users a back end platform to access
the site and update it. It allows people with no knowledge of web development the ability
to update information, themselves, which is quite cost effective. The benefit of this
is that you can make timely edits to your website without waiting for a developer to
do it for you; so it allows you to post news and events or sales promotions on your site
at any time. Importantly, there's no need to pay anyone to make these changes to your
site.
Now, dynamic sites can be more expensive to develop initially and this is due to their
complex nature and the inclusion of the content management system or CMS. But a dynamic site
that can offer other functions that are not available on a static site, such as discussion
boards, photo galleries, integration of your Twitter feed or Facebook and other social
media channels.
Here's an example of a dynamic site. We see that Pure Indulgence have chosen a website
with dynamic functionality, which includes a shopping cart option, specials, promotions,
a customer log in and booking pages. Now, these would all be updated on a regular basis
and require information to be stored on an external file.
So which option is best for your business? The thing to remember is that both static
and dynamic websites can be effective. However, the decision of which option is best for your
particular business should be decided by the functionality needs of your website and, ultimately,
your budget. If you engage assistance from a web developer/agency, talk through these
options with them and get their expert advice, based on the specific needs of your business.
They will be able to advise you on the most efficient options to meet your needs and requirements.
So optimising your website design. We are now going to look at ways to optimise your
website design by understanding an often neglected or overlooked area of navigation, accessibility
and readability. While we want you to have an exciting and engaging website, there are
a few best practice guidelines that will help make sure the core elements of your site are
optimised correctly.
So first up, navigation. As you probably already know, website navigation refers to the website
elements that help users move around your site. Usually, this is led by a navigation
bar at the top of your page, which is shown on the slide. Clean navigation guides people
to information they want and if people can't find the information they are after, they
will leave and look somewhere else.
So things to remember when it comes to reviewing your navigation include: making sure that
the bar is in a consistent position on every page; make your heading clear and simple to
reflect what people will read when they follow the link. If your heading bar has a drop down
section for subheadings, make sure that all elements, including the topic are clickable
links. Sensibility is about making sure your website is accessible to all and that includes
people with disabilities. The Web Accessibility Initiative was set up by the World Wide Web
Consortium to promote accessibility on the web. They have published guidelines around
a number of elements that you should definitely consider during any website build or refresh
and these elements, as are shown on the screen, are around text alternatives. So provide text
alternatives for any non text content, so it can be changed into other forms people
may need; such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or more simple language.
Time based media. So provide alternatives for audio and video content. Make sure it's
adaptable. Create content that can be presented in different ways. For example, a layout,
without losing information/structure, and make sure it's distinguishable; make it easier
for users to see content, separating foreground from background.
All of these examples are in your workbook, so it's a good idea to refer to the workbook
and get some help, tips and advice.
Now, optimising your website design. Readability is incredibly important and it's often an
overlooked area. This is about making sure that the content that you have on your page
can be read easily, quickly and understood. So what are the key elements? First up, font.
Your choice of font style/size can affect your visitor's experience to the website.
Standard fonts are always the best option, to guarantee that the visitor's browser can
display your website the way you want it to.
Other tips to remember: obviously, to make sure your text is in a plain and easy to read
font. San Serif fonts like Arial and Verdana are good quality fonts to use on websites.
Also, only use one font type throughout the site, particularly for the content. Your font
size should be at around about 12 points and definitely avoid using upper case text. In
the online environment, this is recognise the as shouting.
Importantly, keep it short. People read websites differently to other written forms. As people
scan websites to find the information they think is important, your content needs to
be short and to the point. So break up any large blocks of texts into paragraphs with
headings and dot points; and keep your sentences as simple as possible. Remove any unnecessary
words.
Structure is also very important. The key to a great website structure is putting the
most important information at the top. Give people what they want to know straight up.
Don't make them search for it.
White space also very important. It is an essential element that is definitely overlooked
often. White space is the space that separates content element, such as text and images.
A website that is overcrowded with information or images or advertisements are usually difficult
to read/follow and white space provides a separation of information, which enhances
the visual design of the site.
Colour and contrast. Using unique background and text colours, it can individualise your
site. But make sure you consider how your chosen colours look, when they are combined.
Websites that have highly contrasting colours are the easiest to read. For example, a light
background with a dark font. Dark backgrounds and fonts with low contrasts, like grey text
on a white background, are much harder to read. We have put a card on the screen which
shows a range of best practice colour contrasts and some that are definitely recommended against.
The other element to this is making sure that people with colour blindness or other visual
impairments can read your site.
Vision Australia has a free tool to check your website's colour combination, to determine
if they provide good visibility. The tool can also create simulations of certain visual
conditions, such as colour blindness. To access the colour contrast analyser go to visionaustralia.org,
and you can find the full direct link in your workbook as well.
I am going to give you an example of a website, Poppy Cakes. I think it does all the elements
quite well. So it's got fantastic contrasting colours, with the light blue and the brown.
It's clear and consistent, in terms of its navigation here on the screen. It's got very
simple font used for the body copy; and it's also got a really good use of white space.
I encourage everyone to do a bit of research online, within their industry as well, to
see what sort of tone your competitors are using, before you start making considerations
on the design of your own.
So posting effective content. Your content is critical and getting it right is crucial.
In reality, you only have a few seconds to convert a web visitor into an engaged user.
Capturing and keeping their attention comes down to understanding them as an audience
and how they consume online media. Segment your online target audience by considering
what information they are searching for when they click on your site. Do they need a local
service? Do they want to learn how to undertake a DIY project, or do they want a demonstration
video? Providing relevant and interesting/unique information to answer consumers' needs is
the most effective way to reach your audience and encourage them, most importantly, to do
business with you.
So some tips to improving your web content. Writing for the web is a skill that uses writing
conventions that are very different from other writing styles. Over the next few slides,
we are going to discuss some tips that will help you to review your web copy and ensure
it's engaging and persuasive, as well as relevant to your audience; and they include having
a clear strategy, making your point, being relevant, including the "call to action",
and using hyperlinks.
So, firstly, having a clear strategy. As your very first step, create a clear plan outlining
your purpose, audience and timeline. Consider how you will maintain the content in the long
term. Is it timeless information or something that will need to be updated in the future?
Also, think about the tone you want to set in your website that will reflect upon your
business culture. Do you want to be conversational or professional or even humorous?
Next up is making your point. Use clear headings, short sentences, and simple language; and
order the most important information at the top of the page. A few simple tips on writing
shorter website content might be to, again, put the most important information first.
Use easy to understand words and phrases; break up long paragraphs and sentences; and
remove any unnecessary words or content.
Sites that are regularly updated are more likely to engage with your target audience.
This is because it keeps your site current and provides a reason for users to return.
Including the "call to action" is a way of encouraging your visitors to do something
after they have read your page and this includes actions such as calling to speak to an expert
or signing up to an email list.
"Call to action". That can be included as a hyperlink within your body text or buttons
and regularly accompanied with phrases like "contact us" or "register here" or even "find
out more". Using hyperlinks in your website body, particularly as a "call to action" is
a very effective way of guiding people around your site; but it's important to use keywords
or phrases as your hyperlink. Rather than using "click here for more information", the
hyperlink uses a keyword or phrase in your actual text that contains a link to another
relevant page. For example, in the examples on screen, the first option that hyperlinks
the keyword is a recommended approach rather than "click here" in the second line.
Hyperlinking will help with your search engine optimisation as well. Search engines require
content, such as hyperlinks, to find other pages within your website, as well as to and
from your websites. It let's search engines find the pages in your site and list them
as searchable. So using the "click here" techniques actually hide the keyword link navigation
from the search engines. A really good example for you to go to would be Wikipedia, which
uses an incredible array of hyperlinks within their website to sought information. It's
well worth going into that website, to see how they do it.
Business blogs. So for those of you who don't have a blog or aren't aware, a blog is a discussion/opinion
web page that consists of short, frequently updated posts on a topic of interest. For
businesses, blogs can be an effective way to communicate with customers and for employees
to share their knowledge, capability and their experiences. They can be a cost effective
way to publish current information on your website, without the need to content a web
developer to publish content on your behalf. It's also a more relaxed writing style, making
it less time consuming than developing a copy for your website. You can also use blogs to
publish articles, opinion pieces, industry updates or even portfolio work.
So there are two options for publishing blogs: an on site blog. You can get a developer to
add a blog to your site, if you have a CMS. This is a great way to provide new content
to people who visit your website. There is also separate blogs. You can set up a free
blog separate to your site using wordpress.com or blogger.com. While this is a cost effective
alternative, it does create another platform that you need to manage/control. It also doesn't
provide the opportunity for directing traffic to your site that an on site blog does.
Now, the example on screen is of a business blog, 22 Michaels. It's a really effective
business blog from the creators of the online shoe store, Shoes of Prey. The blog discusses
diverse topics, including their experience establishing Shoes of Prey; experiences in
their day to day business; even attendance at events and company highlights.
Using images and videos on your site. As we discussed in our previous webinar, images
and videos are an incredibly effective way of communicating information and engaging
your audience. The benefits as are on the screen; they provide rich content, build brand
awareness, enhance experiences on your site and re enforce your key messages. So if selling
a product, an image is an absolute must. But too many images could lose the page focus.
And please do not use free stock images; it really cheapens the look and feel of your
site and it is well worthwhile making the investment in good quality images to attract
more users to your site. Add alt tags to describe the image which will assist vision impaired
viewers.
You Tube. Videos have immense benefits for your site and they provide a really good opportunity
to introduce your business and your staff; obviously, show off your products and explain
your business's differentiation. A great way to demonstrate things that would be very difficult
to explain in writing.
Basically, telling customers how to do something is one thing, but showing them on a video
is quite another. Adding a video to You Tube and then to your site is a great way for you
to quickly and cheaply add a video to your website, whilst also reducing the drawdown
on your data.
The webinar workbook provides a step by step process on how to embed a You Tube video on
your site. Again, I would encourage people to refer to the book of today's webinar.
Compatibility. The use of smartphones you know, iPhones and androids is fast growing,
and the emergence of these smartphones and even tablets such as iPads are completely
changing the way people access the Internet. People are now accessing the Internet with
their smartphones and tablets to find entertainment and information on the go.
With the 2012 census on e business report, 96 per cent of Australians own a mobile phone.
Now looking at the graph on the screen, 58 per cent of these Australian mobile phone
owners access the Internet using their mobile phones; and 34 per cent of Australians are
accessing the Internet via tablets. So websites are now becoming accessed by screens that
vary greatly in size, resolution and performance. Businesses need to ensure that their website
is being optimised for use on all devices.
Responsive web design. One way of catering for this is, obviously, responsive web design.
It's aimed at crafting sites that provide an optimal viewing experience across all devices.
It incorporates a combination of grids and layouts that automatically respond to a phone,
tablet or computer being used by altering the resolution, the graphic sizes, the scripting
and navigation requirements.
An example is the Black Milk website on your screen. They show that the website, what it
looks like if you access it via your desktop computer or via your mobile phone. If you
haven't done it already, I would encourage you to look up your business website on your
smartphone and see how user friendly it is on your mobile phone or your touchpad device.
Browser compatibility. Another consideration for your website is ensuring that it will
look how you want it to across the range of browsers that are available. This is because
websites can behave differently in different operating systems and browser environments.
The main browsers include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. There are also
different versions available of the different browser types. Older browser versions are
periodically dropped in supported environments, so it's important to make sure your website's
functionality and user experience remains intact and current across multiple browsers.
This is a fairly technical thing to address in the timeframe we have and I would advise
raising this with your web developer to ensure it's catered for within your site. As a general
rule, your web developer should use this table that we have provided you as a list of browsers
and operating systems to test it against.
So we have got another poll. And I am going to open the poll for you now: So which channel
do you think is the most cost effective in bringing people to your website?
I am going to close the poll and share the responses.
...
So it's interesting. 64 per cent have said search engines such as Google, as well as
...
27 per cent for social media. We are about to start discussing promotion of your website.
There's no correct answer. It will really depend on your business and what promotional
channels that you currently have.
So getting people to your website. With all your investment in your website, you want
to make sure that you are getting people there and there are a few ways you can get people
to interact with your business using your website.
Firstly, encourage interaction by plug ins. Social plug ins are links that can be placed
on your business's website to encourage more traffic to your social media platforms, which
is Facebook and Twitter; even You Tube or Google Plus. The image below shows a plug
in bar that can be applied to your website or pieces of content such as videos or blogs.
What these plug ins do is allow people who are browsing your website to comment/share
or "like" or "plus" content from your website onto their social media platforms for their
friends to see.
Obviously, Facebook also have a wide range of plug in buttons that can be installed,
each with specific purposes; and these include liking an item or subscribing or recommending
and commenting. Facebook creates a code for you or your developer to implement on your
website, so your visitors can see what their friends have liked or commented or shared.
If you like more information on the types of Facebook plug ins, or to find the code
to send your web developer or agency, there's a link in the workbook on page 17.
Twitter has what's known as the tweet button, which is a small widget that allows users
to tweet information; usually a link from the site to their followers. Having the tweet
button, makes the process of sharing videos/blogs very easy for the visitor. Again, for more
information about how to install that tweet button, just follow the link in the workbook.
So promoting your site. Pretty straightforward. There are many ways to promote your site for
free. As I have listed here, word of mouth, your e newsletter, a blog which we have already
discussed today, brochures; obviously, even your business cards and signage.
Search engine optimisation. It's something that's been brought up on numerous occasions
throughout this webinar series. You will note that one of the most important ways to promote
your website is via SEO. It's a process of improving the visibility of a website or a
web page in search engines such as Google or Yahoo and Bing, among others. It considers
how your consumers search for information. So every search is started by someone typing
a keyword or phrase into a search engine and clicking "search", so all the results that
are returned are based around the keywords entered. For example, if you typed "wedding
dresses", you would get very different results than if you searched "dressing for a wedding".
This means that if you want to rank highly for a certain page, you need to ensure your
website content targets specific keyword queries.
SEO is the best considered during your website design and development process. Now, it's
tricky and understanding the searching behaviours of your audience and figuring out which keywords
you need to focus can be really a task. However, the rewards are high if you can increase your
search visibility.
Search engine marketing. It involves the website owner paying to advertise, the top of the
page above other search results. The links appear as sponsored links or ads related to
and it's an effective way to ensure your business appears on search result pages. But it can
be seen as less credible because the result has been paid for. Now, the ads appear under
sponsored links in the side column of the search page and may also appear in additional
positions above the free search results.
Review and improvement. It's important to review your website regularly to ensure that
it's achieving your business goals. If your website didn't performing the way you want
and delivering on your objectives, then you need to work out what the issue is and then
address it. Reviewing your website's performance gives you the chance to change your approach
to ensure that you are not only attracting people to your site, but engaging them and
keeping them there. It will also show whether your marketing strategies, such as your SEO
or content marketing, are working to drive traffic to your site.
We are going to quickly look at analytics, which is one of the leading free websites
analysis tools. Google Analytics can provide a range of website statistics, including the
number of visitors to your site, unique visitors, geographic location of visitors, most viewed
pages and also how they got to your page.
Learning about your audience. Google Analytics provides the following reports, as you can
see on the screen. Now, I will just give you a quick overview of each. However, as we are
sort of pretty limited for time today, I would advise you to also check the workbook and
visit the Google Analytics site for more detailed information.
I will just go back, actually. I didn't realise that we were in summary, there. My apologies.
Basically, your dashboard will provide key current month's statistics at a glance and
will show you information on new visits, unique visitors, maximising your website potential,
visits by browser, average visit duration and the pages that have been visited on your
website; the bounce rates as well as revenue and goal completions.
Real time reporting provides you with live statistics on your website activity. It tracks
activity in real time and can provide data within seconds of the activity taking place
on your site. Data that can be generated in real time includes the number of current visitors,
visitors' geographic locations, referrals as well as pages being viewed.
Audience overview reports provide insight into who makes up your audience. So location,
language as well as other variables. How that audience reaches and consumes your site, i.e.
the technology, whether it be mobile, touchpads or through regular web. Loyalty and engagement
as well, in terms of behaviour; and their location.
Traffic sources are the source location in which a visitor has arrived on Google.com;
a Facebook link, Facebook.com or a direct URL entry into the web browser or bookmark
bar. That can be viewed in terms of the visits over the last month, which is like a line
graph. All traffic sources are by percentage, in the form of a pie chart and metrics; for
search traffic keyword, search traffic match query, search traffic source, referral traffic
source and direct traffic landing.
Content reports will show you how success the content on your website has been in meeting
the needs of your visitors. Data that can be accessed includes the site content pages
report that will provide information on how often each page on your site was viewed. For
websites that have a built in search box function to assist their visitors, Google Analytics
site search report shows data that will allow you to find out whether your visitors were
successful in finding their desired information.
So, in summary, we have gained an understanding of the purpose of your website that will guide
the design and functionality. Obviously, remember to consider the elements of navigation, accessibility
and readability to maximise the effectiveness of your site.
Web content should be strategic, relevant and interesting to your target audience and
include, obviously, as we said, a "call to action". Make sure your website is readable
across different devices. Promote your website using SEO and SEM and take time to review
and improve; to understand what's working on your site.
There's further information available. Please use these links to get access to the workbook,
if you don't already have it. It is a fantastic resource for everyone to access information;
not just from today's webinar, but from the whole series of webinars that we have been
conducting over the last few months. I will now hand you back to Helen for Q&A.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Thanks, Doug. Thank you very much for that presentation. We are just going
to Q&A. We have had a couple of people ask about the workbook. It was emailed out prior
to today in one of the emails reminding people about the webinar. But if you don't have a
copy, please just let us know in the questions box and Stephen will ensure that you do receive
a copy of the workbook. As Doug said, the recordings of these webinars are available
on www.business.qld.gov.au.
Anyway, we will get onto the questions now. We have had quite a few, so we will see what
we can get through in the timeframe.
We have had quite a few questions around CMS and for some of you who joined us a bit late
and have asked, CMS is a "content management system"; and, Doug, I am wondering if you
could go through again what an open source CMS is and why we would recommend that over
a custom built CMS?
DOUG PYE: The benefit with open source is that it's been developed through a collaborative
effort, involving a number of developers. Therefore, the actual software is free. It's
updated regularly. New features are always being developed and there's lots of information
on how to use the software.
A custom built CMS is the IP of one web development company and they own that CMS. You are really
just leasing it. This can be great if you need a lot of customisation to your site.
However, you can run into issues, such as specific hosting requirements, the longevity
of your relationship with that developer and also future customisation.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Thanks for that, Doug. I hope that's answered most people's questions
around that topic. Also, when we are talking about contact management systems and we were
talking a bit about "free tools", do you know of any websites that offer some free templates
to build a site on, and what are a couple of those that people could perhaps look into?
DOUG PYE: Well, there's a couple that come to mind. One is Wix or Weebly. With Wix, it's
got great looking templates and quite intuitive drag and drop interface as well. Also, importantly,
there's lots of support. But there are visible advertisements on the free platforms; i.e.
the Wix logo on the side and on the bottom of the website. You can't change the templates,
once you have populated one, and they are very limited in terms of their e commerce
functions. But it's good for beautiful, attractive websites.
With Weebly, it's probably one of the easiest and user friendly website builders. It's excellent,
actually, and there's no pressure to upgrade. Also, there is a broad range of templates.
But it's not designed for complete e commerce needs and there is a limited number of templates
compared to others. Also, very, very basic blog functions. But it's friendly and easy
to use and it also has pretty comprehensive tools.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Okay, great. We have also got a couple of people commenting, that CrazyDomains
is really good and low cost, and also ThemeForest for WordPress templates is good as well. So
I think there's quite a variety out there, that people can look at.
DOUG PYE: Absolutely. Look, it's really important to shop around. Don't necessarily settle for
the first thing that you see. Spend some time doing the research required to find a solution
that meets your requirements.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Great. I found an interesting question that might help some other people
as well: this person is happy with their existing website but wants to be able to provide a
bit of a "latest news" section. So they are asking if they need to invest in a CMS.
DOUG PYE: Well, the quick answer to that is "yes", unless you are experienced at editing
HTML code. However, rather than invest in a CMS, you may want to consider using a blog
or a Facebook page to display the latest news or use links and plug ins to drive traffic
between your blog and Facebook page and your website.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Great, thank you. I had some questions about Google AdWords. What are your
thoughts on Google AdWords?
DOUG PYE: Well, if done well, Google AdWords is worth the investment. But I would recommend
that you do a lot of research before taking that plunge. If you don't have a strong strategy,
then your cost per click will become potentially incredibly expensive. Perry Marshall has really
good articles on his website, "getting started with Google AdWords" and that is just perrymarshall.com.
I suggest that our attendees today visit that website for some really handy advice.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Thank you, Doug. Had a couple of questions in terms of design aspects to
a website. I think the first one is: why should we avoid italics when using a font on web
pages?
DOUG PYE: It's hard to pick up. It's just best to have a level of consistency on your
website. Now, I think our attendees today need to understand where I am coming from.
I'm not talking about designability of your brand, which might have different types of
fonts included within their branding. These are elements of the website which a viewer
will just simply see as static, even though you might have a click through from it.
What I am getting to is the content that people are going to scan. If they can't pick it up
easily and quickly, they are just simply going to go to another site and you have effectively
lost them, potentially for good, which is never a good thing.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Thanks, Doug. Another design focused one is: is it better to have a light
background on your website rather than a dark one?
DOUG PYE: Well, it really depends on your brand and what's most appropriate. Generally,
light backgrounds are more user friendly, but the most important element is contrast,
as we explained earlier in the webinar.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Okay, great. Also, if you wouldn't mind clarifying: what we mean by
"free stock images"; if you wouldn't mind explaining that concept?
DOUG PYE: Sure, the simple way to explain that is: Clip Art, which people are very familiar
with. It is free stock. And a savvy Internet user, web user, is immediately going to pick
up whether or not you are using free stock imagery, which just looks quite cheap. And
they are going to know that you haven't made that additional investment that's required
to get the appropriate images that clearly communicate your message that you are trying
to get across in that particular part of your website.
Obviously, if you do it in a blog let's say a restaurant is doing a foodie blog, they
can take the photos themselves, but what I am talking about, in terms of "cheap, stock
free images", are the type of filler images that are contained within websites to sort
of break up the white space. Just be really careful about which ones you are choosing.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Because there's really nothing worse than a photo that you are using, appearing
on someone else's website. You know, we have had problems with even offline materials for
years, where if you use a free stock image, you are likely to see it everywhere. Even
if you buy a stock image for 75/$100 and put that in your brochure, there's nothing worse
than seeing somebody else using exactly the same image. It kind of affects your credibility,
really.
DOUG PYE: It does. And, look, we can all very quickly pick up on whether or not a type of
image within a creative context is Americanised. It's very easy to pick up, Helen. So, yeah,
as I said, be really careful about which images that you choose.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Yeah. Look, Doug, this question I think we have answered in previous webinars
but it's always a good one to chat about, which is: when we were talking about search
engine optimisation, you mentioned regular updating your website. Some people have asked:
how often should they update their websites?
DOUG PYE: Well, as soon as the analytics start telling them to. If you notice on your website
that the amount of visits or hits or the amount of time spent on your website is reducing
over time, that's a clear indication that you need to go back into the site and alter
your hyperlinks or particular keywords and content to ensure you can lift the profile
once again of your website.
So, look, I would say every six months you really should be looking at your website content
and whether or not you do need to change it. There's a company called Hitwise that can
provide you with key search word terms that are most used within particular industry sectors
and it's a fantastic tool when you are searching for the most relevant keywords to put within
your context. But there are obviously, also, free analytic platforms such as Google, where
you can do similar things.
So, again, it really comes down to research. But to answer the question, definitely every
six months you should be looking to upgrade your content.
HELEN HUTCHINGS: Great, thank you for that, Doug. Thank you everybody for your attendance
today. I am terribly sorry, we have run out of time and I know we haven't quite got to
everyone's questions, but I hope that you enjoyed the webinar and we hope that you found
it useful for your business and we really appreciate your participation.
An evaluation survey will be sent to you shortly and we very much appreciate your feedback
on today's webinar. Thank you again for attending and we hope you have a lovely afternoon.